Apparently this film is a remake of the Japanese film Ikuru, which was itself inspired by Tolstoy’s novella ‘The Death of Ivan Ilyich’. That doesn’t surprise me because it had that well-structured short story feel about it. In fact it reminded me of the other film based on a short story that I saw recently ‘The Quiet Girl‘ (well, last year) that affected me so much with its close-up focus, beautiful cinematography and repressed emotional pain. I’m not surprised, either, that Kazuo Ishiguro was involved in the screenplay because it has the same nostalgia and repressed yearning of ‘The Remains of the Day’. Bill Nighy’s acting is just wonderful and the stultifying atmosphere of the office is so well captured that you can feel it deadening you.
Any Australian child who grew up during the 1960s would know the story of The Drover’s Wife. It was in the Fifth Grade School Reader, and we all had the vision of the unnamed woman, dressing up on Sundays and walking through the lonely bush pushing the perambulator with her children beside her; and sitting up all night waiting for the snake to come out from the woodpile into the house, with Alligator the dog stretched out, his hackles rising as the snake finally slithers into the log hut.
I hadn’t realized that the version we read at school was an abridgment of the longer story (which can be found at http://www.eastoftheweb.com/short-stories/UBooks/DrovWife.shtml) and it was only when I read the longer version that I realized the racism threaded through it. The “stray blackfellow…the last of his tribe and a King” had built the woodpile hollow, and was thus indirectly to blame for the presence of the snake in the house; then there is the caricature figure of King Jimmy, who sent his wife Black Mary “the “whitest” gin in all the land” to assist with her third childbirth. Thankfully, these do not appear in the School Reader version.
But it’s easy to see how the story of The Drover’s Wife acts as a springboard into Purcell’s 20th/21st century reimagining of the story with an aboriginal protagonist, domestic violence and rape wrought by white men, and morally superior indigenous characters. Far from the heroic white settler ideal, the white men here are murderous brutes and ‘justice’ is warped. She fleshes out and gives a name to The Drover’s Wife – Molly Johnson- and she gives “Black Mary” a backstory that reflects the violence of Australia’s colonial history. There are no white saviours here: the good man is Yadaka, and it is Yadaka who reveals Molly’s own story to her.
There are nods to the original Lawson story – a fleeting reference to the Sunday walks through the bush- enough for someone who knows the story to recognize it. But younger readers, I suspect, would not know the Lawson story and would perhaps not recognize the subversion of the original that Leah has executed. Perhaps in 30 years, the subtitle will be sufficient ‘The Legend of Molly Johnson’.
This was such a clever, insightful playing with white settler fantasies that I feel curmudgeonly in pointing out the flaws in the story which are, unfortunately, many. The book is an expansion of the stage play and it still bears the strong use of dialogue that would have marked a performance. But with the tasks of expanding into a novel, Purcell has permitted herself to explore her characters’ “inner thoughts” and this is one of the things that brings the book undone. She skips from character to character, switching between first and third person which gives a disjointed feel to the narrative. She has introduced two white characters into the book – Nate and his wife Louisa Clinton- who, in a twist that doesn’t quite come off, ends up being a nod to Henry Lawson’s mother Louisa Lawson. There are plot steps that just don’t make sense: for an isolated bush-hut there seem to be many people going past, and it is never explained why Molly stops, endangering her children whom she has protected fiercely throughout, on their way to Yadaka’s cave. The ending was heavy-handed and cliched.
There were a number of disconcerting anachronisms in the book. Women had ‘baby bellies’; there were ‘hobby farms’; people did ‘business degrees’ (universities offered no such courses); people were affected by hormones (not discovered until 1935). This is not the American West: executions required a Supreme Court trial, not the local magistrate, and they took place in capital cities. Even the scenario of children ordered by a judge to be ‘taken’ without reason is anachronistic, the legislation being introduced in the early 20th century. This book cried out for good editing and fact checking.
There is much to admire in its subversion and defiance. But this book has shown me that playwrights are not necessarily novelists, and that even the most creative and politically sharp critiques can be brought undone by infelicities.
Kerning Cultures A Past Life I’m quite attracted to the idea of a past life (or lives) but I don’t really believe it. However, adherents to the Druze faith certainly do believe in reincarnation. Possibly this is because you can’t convert to the Druze faith: you need to be born into it, and rebirth keeps the numbers stable. This is the story of Heba, who lived in both America and Lebanon, who as a child called herself ‘Amad’ and spoke of ‘Amin’, her husband. People from her parents’ village back in Lebanon told her family that Amad had died, and that they had known her. As an adult, Heba went back to Lebanon to locate this family, but found herself enmeshed in a family that she did not know or remember.
The ‘Brown Building’, site of the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire
History This WeekFire in the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory. Saturday 25 March 1911 was the date of this appalling fire, which led to the deaths of 146 garment workers within 15 minutes – 123 women and girls and 23 men in a 10 storey building opposite Washington Square in New York. This episode features David Von Drehle, author of Triangle: The Fire That Changed America who points out that the Triangle Shirtwaist factory was actually one of the most well-lit and modern of the garment factories which replaced the sweatshops in tenement buildings. The fire broke out on a Saturday afternoon as the employees were about to pick up their pay and leave for the weekend. (Even though the vast majority of workers were Jewish, they had to work on Saturdays). The shirtwaist factory occupied the 8,9 and 10th floors, and was conducted by Max Blanck and Isaac Harris, former garment workers themselves. But by now they were entrepreneurs, suspicious of their workers and vehemently anti-union. When fire broke out, the fire brigade found that their ladders only reached to the 6th floor. The lift operators were in many ways the heroes here, running the lifts up and down to the burning floors for as long as they could (after making sure that all the management staff were evacuated from the top floor, that is). The water did not work and escape doors were locked to prevent theft, but both owners escaped punishment. However, the fire prompted changes to working conditions …eventually, once Tammany Hall politicians began distancing themselves from the factory owners. I was amazed that the building was still standing when we visited New York back in 2011, and it has plaques on the wall commemorating the tragedy. So strange to think of so much death occurring right opposite Washington Square Park.
History ExtraGeorge VI’s Nazi Dilemma During WWII, George VI (i.e. Elizabeth’s father) faced a dilemma on two fronts. The first was his brother, the disaffected former Edward now Duke of Windsor. The second was his advisors, including Chamberlain and his foreign secretary Halifax, who both urged appeasement – and indeed, George himself leaned towards appeasement at first. This episode features Alexander Larman, the author of The Windsors at War: The Nazi Threat to the Crown The Duke of Windsor, he says, was cunning but not clever and he worried more about communism than fascism. Although not a Nazi himself, he did have Nazi sympathies. He harboured fantasies that perhaps he might be invited back as King, and he thought that he might be able to act as a puppet leader for Hitler, whom he admired till the end. He did do intelligence work for Britain early in the war, but then gave intelligence to the Nazis e.g. the layout of Buckingham Palace so that there could be targeted bombing. There was still residual warmth for the former king, so it was decided to send him to the Bahamas as Governor rather than have him tried for treason in England (for which there would be grounds). In effect, George VI found his mettle during the war and became good friends with Churchill.
The Ancients Beast Hunts. Our image of lions in the Colosseum underplays the industrial scale of importation of animals for spectacles that were held throughout the Roman Empire. The killing was on a massive scale: 9000 beasts were killed in the 100 days festival of the opening of the Colosseum. The logistics of locating and shipping animals from the provinces required organization, and provinces could be taxed in animals rather than money. The animals were often used for meat afterwards. But so were condemned non-Roman criminals who were fed to the animals, the ultimate form of death-shaming. Emperors used displays of animals to show their power, although Pompey’s plan to ride into his triumph on elephants was brought undone when they didn’t fit through the gate!
Rear Vision (ABC) War in Ukraine: The Political Story. I learned more from this episode than I did from the earlier one (The Military Story). The central and eastern nations in NATO had been warning about Russia for some time, but were largely disregarded by the ‘older’ NATO nations of Germany and France. Finland and Sweden are now looking to join NATO, thus bringing NATO right to the Russian border (one of the reasons that Putin put forward for moving into Ukraine). Finland has always had a large army, and Sweden (which previously prided itself on its neutrality) was already building up its armed forces after allowing them to run down. The Baltic States, Finland and Sweden are now more aligned than they were. Central Asia, which has had a strong relationship with Russia in the past, are wary, and are looking more to southern Asia as an alternative. Turkey is useful to Russia because of its presence in NATO, and Iran is providing weapons. The non-Western countries e.g. South America, Africa are cynical about the West’s response, and largely keeping out of it.
Emperors of Rome.Episode LIV – There and Back Again (An Emperor’s Tale) After a short time in Rome (having taken the long way home), Hadrian sets off again on a four year tour. First he went west to Gaul, Brittania (where he left the 3-metre thick Hadrian’s Wall) and España; then he went east to Syria and Turkey, then he went to Greece which is where he really wanted to be (because he loved all things Greek) and stayed there for two years. This four-year peregrination was more about diplomacy than anything else- he did lots of building along the way as part of marking Rome’s dominance across the provinces. Wherever he went, he left troops in a peace-keeping role. It was while he was in Greece that he met his beautiful boy Antinous. Episode LV – What Hadrian Loves Best. Three things. 1. Impressive buildings. Even though it was hard to find space in Rome after all these centuries, he did, and he built the big 10-column temple to Venus and Roma. He rebuilt the Pantheon for the 3rd time. But although he liked leaving buildings with his name on them in the provinces, he was careful not to do so in Rome which would have seemed crass. 2. His wife Vibia Sibina. Well maybe he didn’t love her that much. Nonetheless, she was an Augusta and their marriage was a way of strengthening the Romano-Spanish contingent in Rome. 3. Antinous. He really did love Antinous. Lots of Roman men had boy lovers, but Hadrian seems to have been particularly besotted by him. Nonetheless, it’s debatable whether Hadrian was ‘homosexual’ in our sense of the word today. There is debate over Antinous’ death: was it an accident? suicide? even murder? What is not debatable is that Hadrian was heartbroken when he died. Episode LVI – May His Bones Rot Although he had no intention of expanding the Empire, Hadrian was intent on consolidating what he still held. There had been discontent bubbling away in Judea for some time, and the stubbornly monotheistic Jews were an intractable problem in a polytheistic culture like Rome. Hadrian had plans to rebuild Jerusalem, which was still in ruins after the first Roman-Jewish war of 66-73CE, as a distinctively Roman colony, and he outlawed circumcision. An anti-Roman insurrection broke out, led by the Messianic Simon bar Kokhba, and led to a three year guerilla war of attrition. According to Cassius Dio, Roman war operations in Judea left some 580,000 Jews dead and 50 fortified towns and 985 villages razed. Hadrian erased the province’s name from the Roman map, renaming it Syria Palaestina, and had Jerusalem rebuilt in the Greek style after re-naming it Aelia Capitolina.
“Have you read The Dictionary of Lost Words?” I asked my daughter-in-law. She hadn’t, she said, although she started it and then abandoned it because she didn’t find it very interesting. I could sympathize: I wasn’t too enamoured of the first eighty or so pages of the book either. But I’m really glad that I persevered, because by the end, I absolutely loved this book.
I am a historian, and I love history, but I am very conscious of when the research behind a book swamps the narrative. I find myself wishing that the author had done their research, and then just put it away out of reach and written into the spaces left in the history. This is exactly what Pip Williams has done here, and her book is all the stronger for it.
The book is based on the real-life compilation of the Oxford English Dictionary, which formed the basis of Simon Winchester’s The Surgeon of Crowthorne, a book which describes the relationship between James Murray, the Editor of the OED and volunteer Dr. William Chester Minor, incarcerated at Broadmoor Asylum. Pip Williams read that book too, and in her author’s note, she says:
I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I was left with the impression that the Dictionary was a particularly male endeavour. From what I could glean, all the editors were men, most of the assistants were men, most of the volunteers were men and most of the literature, manuals and newspaper articles used as evidence for how words were used, were written by men. Even the delegates of the Oxford University Press- those who held the purse strings- were men
p. 410
Yet there were women involved in the Dictionary, and Pip Williams found them. There were James Murray’s wife Ada and three daughters Hilda, Elsie and Rosfrith who were engaged in the endeavour. Edith Thompson and her sister Elizabeth provided 15,000 quotations – perhaps not as many as Dr Minor, but prolific nonetheless. There was Eleanor Bradley who worked as part of her father’s team of assistants. Then there were the women who sent in quotations for words, or who wrote the texts that counted as ‘evidence’ of a word.
It is among these real-life women that Williams has created her story, finding the gaps and merging fact and fiction. Her fictional character, Esme, is the daughter of one of the lexicographers working in the Scriptorium, a rather-grandly named shed in the grounds of James Murray’s house. Her mother had died, and her father is raising her with the aid of Lizzie, an Irish maid not much older than Esme herself. Esme accompanies her father to the ‘Scrippy’, where she hides under the table as the lexicographers work, and it is from under the table that she notices one of the slips on which the words are written floating down to the floor. It’s the word ‘bondmaid’, and she takes it and hides it in the trunk under Lizzie’s bed onto which she scratches the label ‘The Dictionary of Lost Words’. As she becomes increasingly aware of the class gap between herself and Lizzie, and the gender gap between the men compiling the Dictionary and the women whose work provides the fabric of their middle-class existence, she is drawn to more ‘lost’ and ‘unknowledged’ words. She collects them from Lizzie, from old, toothless Mabel in the market, from actress-turned-suffragette Tilda, and as her experience grows, from her own knowledge of women’s bodies.
At the same time, this fictional Lizzie is living within a real-life historical world including the suffrage movement and World War I. Just as we are shaped by events and trends (for myself: baby-boomer prosperity, a politics in which the Labor Party became a viable political contender, the internet, 9/11, COVID), so too Lizzie’s life is touched by historical events, but Williams deftly keeps these as external, but inexorable influences without letting them overwhelm the narrative. She has her research well under control.
The book is steeped in questions of language and power, and there are some nice little plot tweaks that highlight the importance of language and words. One of the lexicographers speaks to Esme in Esperanto – that quixotic attempt to construct an international language and the Suffragettes adopt the motto of “Deeds, Not Words”. The epilogue, which takes us to a Lexicography conference in Adelaide in 1989 might seem superfluous or tangential but it’s not: the collection of the Kaurna language by ethnographers and missionaries and its restoration, like language reclamation projects in many Indigenous communities, is another form of “lost words”. In this way, Williams takes the process of transcription and compiling out of the little Scriptorium in an Oxford garden over a period seventy-one years to our own present as Australians as we face our own truth about languages that were proscribed and extinguished, only to be found again.
I really enjoyed this book, and didn’t want it to finish.
My rating: 9/10
Sourced from: CAE bookgroups, and my own copy as well.
It’s the first of April, first Saturday and so it’s Six Degrees of Separation day. This is a meme conducted through Kate’s BooksAreMyFavouriteandBest website, where she chooses the starting title, then you link six other titles that spring to mind.
The starting book for April is Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography Born to Run. Of course, I haven’t read it – but that’s not unusual: I have rarely read the book that Kate chooses!
Bruce Springsteen is a singer, but I must confess to neither liking nor disliking him. But one group that I really did like was The Beatles (I’m showing my age) and I’m a sucker for anything Beatle-related. Craig Brown’sOne Two Three Four: The Beatles in Time takes a chronological approach, from the earliest days of playing together and goes through to their last performance on the roof of the building in London. It is written as a series of short chapters – 150 of them – some a few pages in length, some only taking up a page. It’s a very long book at over 600 pages, and the chapters range from facts, personal reminiscence, counterfactual and events that were only tangentially related. In fact, when I finished I wondered if it was even worth it. You can read my review here.
Someone who could count a bit further than four is Grace Lisa Vandenburg, the main character in Toni Jordan’s Addition. Grace counts things obsessively and incessantly, as a way of trying to control her world and all around her. Into this ordered and tense life comes Seamus, who is attracted to her humour and quickness, and steers her towards therapy and medication as a way of overcoming her obsessiveness. We lose our perky, wisecracking, passionate and controlled narrator as the medication submerges her into a slow, passive inertia. Will she lose the medication or lose her man? Or both? And what is the line between eccentricity and madness? It’s a feel-good romantic fiction book- not my usual fare, but certainly good for reading situations when you want something light. My review is here.
A far more searing and uncomfortable approach to ‘madness’ can be found in Kate Richards’ memoir of that name Madness: A Memoir. Kate is a qualified doctor, but years of mental illness have made this career path untenable for her. There is this chaotic, obsessive, hyper-sensitive existence inside her head that somehow co-exists falteringly with the semblance of a ‘normal’ life: a job in medical research, friends, parents, a flat. This is such a brave book. It is simply written, but it is hard to read. I reviewed it here.
A woman being manipulated into thinking that she was mad is a popular trope, but one of the early writers to explore it was Wilkie Collins in The Woman in White. This door-stopper of a book at over 600 pages has all the usual Victorian tropes: grand houses, fortune hunters, madness, swapped identities, secrets, dastardly deeds, swirling fog and graveyards. It uses a favourite Victorian technique of doubles: two sisters; two houses; two villains. But what is really striking about this book is how modern it is in its use of multiple narrators, who handball the narrative between them, and a real sense of tension that mounts through the book. You might not think it, but this 600 page book is almost unputdownable! You can read my review here.
Wilkie Collins was a good friend of Charles Dickens, and their books (most of which came out in serialized form) are long, intricate and a damned good read. I could have gone for any one of Dickens’ books, or a biography of Dickens but instead, I’ll plump for some social history with What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew by Daniel Pool. The book is a cradle-to-grave, upstairs-to-downstairs explanation of the domestic and social world of the characters one might find in Victorian literature. It explains clothes, food, business practices, social manners and expectations etc in a rather whimsical fashion. It doesn’t take itself too seriously, and you don’t really need to have read particularly widely to enjoy it. It is divided into two parts- the first is organized thematically, while the second part is a glossary of particular terms and phrases that you’re likely to encounter in reading Victorian novels. The book is intended as a bit of a hoot, and in that way it probably fulfils the promise of its catchy title perfectly. I reviewed it here.
So, I bet you think I’m going to finish up with a Jane Austen. Not quite. Instead I’ll finish with P.D. James’ Death Comes to Pemberley which is a mash-up of Austen’s characters in Pride and Prejudice with a crime fiction novel. The scenario is this: Darcy and Elizabeth have been happily ensconced at Pemberley for the past six years where Elizabeth has duly delivered two Darcy heirs. It is the eve of the traditional Pemberley ball instituted by Darcy’s mother Lady Anne. Sweet Jane and Bingley have arrived early, Darcy’s sister Georgiana is fending off two suitors in Colonel Fitzwilliam and the young lawyer Mr Alveston, the silver is being polished and the house is crackling with anticipation. Suddenly the preparations are disrupted by Elizabeth’s younger sister Lydia Wickham, arriving unannounced and hysterical, shrieking that Wickham has been murdered in the nearby wood. He hasn’t , but his friend Captain Denny has. I shall go no further… but here’s my review.
Can I possibly link Bruce Springsteen with Pemberley? Maybe I can. Apparently Bruce Springsteen used to live in a mansion too, albeit in Monmouth County, New Jersey. Not Pemberley, perhaps but not too shabby….
Travels Through TimeThe Great Debate: 1860. This episode features Nicholas Spencer, who has recently published Magisteria, The Entangled Histories of Science and Religion, (no small history, this one) He points out that science and religion were not necessarily in tension: that it was more a question of authority. They are both modern terms, coined in the 18th and 19th centuries. ‘Science’ prior to the 19th century often included natural philosophy, maths, natural theology while ‘religion’ as a term arose during the Reformation. He points to John Draper’s 1876 book on the conflict between science and religion, published at a time when the Catholic church was asserting its authority and during a time of European immigration. He also points to the rise of fundamentalism in the early 20th century and the hijacking of evolution by the eugenics movement, leading southern Protestants to become fearful, a defensiveness that was reflected in the Scopes trial. His three scenes were: Scene One: Charles Darwin receiving a letter from clergyman and novelist Charles Kingsley, in November 1859, congratulating him on the Origin of Species, an advance copy of which he has just read. Scene Two: The publication of the most controversial book of the age – not On The Origin of Species but Essays and Reviews, in March 1860, igniting a passionate debate about Biblical texts. Scene Three: The famous Oxford debate between T.H. Huxley (‘Darwin’s bulldog’) and Bishop ‘Soapy’ Sam Wilberforce in late June 1860.
Conversations (ABC) The Life of Doctor Norman Swan. During the coronavirus pandemic, Dr Norman Swan and Tegan Taylor were must-listens for a daily rundown on coronavirus and the political policies set in place. In this episode from July 2021 (I’ve been meaning to listen to this for some time!) Norman Swersky (his name until his father changed it after WWII) talks about his family background in Odessa after 1905, and the attempt to emigrate to United States until the ship’s captain learned that the US migration cap had been reached. He studied medicine and unsuccessfully auditioned for the Royal Academy for the Dramatic Arts- but ended up being a radio celebrity after all!
History ExtraSirens, Succubi and Sex Symbols Featuring Sarah Clegg, author of the new book Woman’s Lore, this episode examines the different myths about female monsters, across time and cultures. Often depicted as a child killer who attacks mothers and babies, these myths reflect the male fears of women’s sexuality and the female fears of childbirth, and as a way of deflecting responsibility for death in times when medicine could offer little escape. She notes that various figures have been adopted by 21st century communities: e.g. Lilith (Adam’s first wife) by the LGBTQI community, and mermaids by the trans community.
Emperors of RomeFrontinus. That’s funny, I thought, I haven’t heard of Emperor Frontinus. That’s because he never was an Emperor but instead was a military man and the writer of treatises especially on military strategy and on aqueducts. He was born in Gaul from Equestrian background, and was obviously very trusted by Domitian, Nerva, and Trajan. He was Governor of Britain betweenn 74-78, and was Consul three times (very unusual). He wrote a technical book on land surveying, then an anecdotal book on military strategies, followed by his most famous work on aqueducts, written after he was made Water Commissioner. He wanted ‘the textbook’ and decided to write it himself, but also to prove that when Senators were given an administrative office, they rose to the challenge. The aquaducts separated water by source and use, and he also dealt issues of fraud and leakage. Episode LII – Hadrian the Little Greek points out his loose family connection with Trajan, although Trajan adopted him anyway as a ward while Trajan was a general. He later married a relative of Trajan, thus forging an even strong link. He was more literary than Trajan, and enjoyed a long period of mentorship. He was never formally adopted as Trajan’s heir (or if he was, it happened just before Trajan died) and there are hints that Trajan’s wife Plotina was behind his accession as emperor. Hadrian quickly deified Trajan, so that he could say that he was the heir of a deified emperor, and he set out finished some of Trajan’s unfinished building projects. Episode LIII – Rome Welcomes Hadrian To cement his position, he had four influential Romans ‘murdered’ before they cause him any problems, although he was careful to distance himself from their deaths. Nonetheless, it was a bad first impression, so he worked hard at dispensing lots of welfare and army provisions and clearing people’s debts. He returned to the Augustan rule of thumb- don’t cross the Euphrates, and divested himself of some of the recently gained territories and installed client kings there. He took the scenic route back to claim his emperorship, taking some two years, and surveying the provinces as he did so. And he started a bit of a fashion trend by wearing a beard- the Greek philosopher look.
Archive on 4 (BBC)Writing Our Mothers. I just loved this episode. Presented by feminist writer Jacqueline Rose, it is structured in 7 ‘chapters’: 1. The Mother as the Angel of the House 2. Mother Looking in 3. Add odds with motherhood 4. The mother as autobiography 5. The Mother, Madness and Rage 6. The Mother and Acts of Violence 7. The Mother and the Erotic. It has readings and archival interviews with a huge range of writers: Arundhati Roy, Edna O’Brien, Sylvia Plath, Maya Angelou, Jeanette Winterson among others, and readings from Toni Morrison, Elena Ferrante and others. I really enjoyed this.
I’m not proud of the fact that I have never read a book about Palestine, until this book. It is a book that is framed completely within the Palestinian viewpoint, written by a writer who is forthright and active in promoting Palestinian rights and decrying Nazism and Zionism and suggesting their connection with Ukraine (as we can tell by recent tweets that have prompted withdrawals of other speakers from the Adelaide Writers’ Festival). The front cover of my version referenced the structure that the author has used in her narrative: that of the cube with its East, West, North, South, Up & Down orientations and the Unreachable Beyond. We meet the Cube in the opening pages, a nine-square-metre, high-tech solitary confinement cell in which Nahr is imprisoned for years, visited occasionally by international inspectors, and a passive-aggressive journalist accompanied her highly-constrained but sympathetic translator. Eventually given a notebook and pens, this is Nahr’s memoir through which we learn how she came to be in the Cube and why.
Superimposed over this ‘cube’ device are the locations in which the book is set, and they are many, because this is a story of dispossession and flight. Nahr’s family originally came from Palestine, but as Israel increased its grip on Palestinian territory, they moved from country to country as refugees. Part I is based in Kuwait, Part II in Iraq, and Part III in Jordan after the geo-politics surrounding Saddam Hussein and the US-led invasion of Iraq forced them to find a more welcoming environment. Part IV is based in Palestine, Part V a quick return to Jordan, then Part VI Palestine, Always.
Nahr actually has three names: Nahr (meaning ‘river’); Yaquoot (insensitively chosen by her father after the name of his lover) and Almas, the name she adopted when she becomes involved in prostitution as a way of supporting her family, who had no idea of how she was earning the money that supported her brother’s studies. She marries early, but the marriage fails. She travels to Palestine to obtain a divorce from her first husband, only to find herself drawn into her former in-law’s family and the Palestinian struggle to hold their land against Israeli settler encroachment.
The title is taken from the James Baldwin’s Letter to my Nephew, making the political point of the link between the African-American struggle in the US and Palestinian oppression. There’s a lot going on here in terms of educating Western readers, especially in its explanation of the implications of Middle East policy for Palestinian families. Too much preaching? Maybe, but I found myself thinking about Australia’s own history of settler-colonialism. I watch the spasms of violence in Gaza and the West Bank; I know about the check-points; I am familiar with the thrusting appropriation of land by the settlers. I know about all these things, but with this book the oppressiveness of colonialism and occupation over everyday life is made real, highlighted by the author’s description of landscape and sense of home.
Emperors of Rome Episode XLVIII – Trajan: Optimus Princeps is the last episode about Trajan, known as the greatest emperor since Augustus (to be honest, the others weren’t much chop). He behaved the way that the elites expected him to, he built lots of infrastructure to keep the masses happy and coming to power at the age of 42, he had neither the recklessness of youth or the sluggishness of old age. The only slight criticism of him is that he was “devoted to boys and wine” but neither of these affected his judgement so that was okay. In 113CE he embarked on war with Parthia, after an earlier foray to fix up Armenia, in order to re-establish Roman authority. At this point, the empire was stretched to its greatest expanse, and things started to unravel a bit. He died unsuspiciously after an 18 year reign. Episode XLIX – Suetonius has been referred to often during these podcasts. He was possibly born in Algeria of an equestrian family and was active during Emperor Hadrian’s time. He was mentored by Pliny and became a librarian and archivist which gave him access to the sources to write his most famous book ‘The Twelve Caesars’. He may have travelled with Hadrian, and it is thought that he may have fallen out with him at some stage. Nonetheless, he is pretty reliable as distinct from….Episode L – Historia Augusta which is a series of biographies, starting with Hadrian and going through to the late 3rd century CE with a gap in the middle. It wasn’t called The Historia Augusta at the time- that name was given to it later. It’s best to think of it as a fun text that gets more and more bizarre, with spurious supporting documents- a bit like a mockumentary. But we have to use it in the absence of other sources.
Lives Less Ordinary(BBC)I Didn’t Know I was Part of an Experiment tells the story of Helene Thiesen, who was born in Nuuk, in Greenland, in 1944. Greenland was a colony of Denmark.At the age of seven, after her father’s death, two men came to see her mother, offering an opportunity to find out “which child is the brightest”. Her mother refused twice, but in the end, she reluctantly relented. Helene was promptly sent 3500 km away to Denmark where she was placed with a foster family. She was sent back to Nuuk after a few years, but not to her mother: instead she was sent to a children’s home. When she finally reunited with her mother, she no longer spoke the same language, and her mother remarried and moved away. Helene was 50 when she found out that she was part of an experiment into changing the environment for children from Greenland and its effects on the child- a bit of a nature/nurture experiment. She still hasn’t forgiven her mother.
Take Me To Your Leader (ABC)Benjamin Netanyahu As we see the footage of huge crowds protesting on the streets after Netanyahu’s ‘reforms’ of the courts, this episode is even more relevant than on 22 February 2023 when it was released. ‘Bibi’ has served a total of 15 years as Prime Minister and his most recent stint is his third comeback, after acting as PM in 1996 (with a narrow victory over Shimon Perez) for just three years; 2009 when he came back for 12 years; and now since December 2022 in an coalition with hard-right colleagues. A ‘prophet of doom’ type politician, in the past he tended to campaign as hard right but become more centrist once he achieved power, but now he needs the cover of the hard right to avoid his own legal entanglements. He is a divisive character, and Israeli politics has splintered into for- and against- Netanyahu politicians. He fears a nuclear armed Iran as a threat, and so he has cosied up to Putin and former President Trump. Guests include Ayala Panievsky, Gates Cambridge scholar, former journalist Haaretz newspaper and research associate at ‘Molad’, The Centre for the Renewal of Israeli Democracy; Mitchell Barak, former aide to Benjamin Netanyahu (who said that he was a horrible boss) and political analyst Dave Sharma, Australia’s former Ambassador to Israel (who is not Jewish- I assumed he was).
Rear Vision (ABC) The War in Ukraine- the military story. This is Part I of a two-part series, released as part of the first anniversary of the invasion of Ukraine. I’d heard much of it before. Russia expected a weak response, as occurred when they invaded Crimea, but by the end of March the Russian troops were withdrawn from Kyiv. There are three elements of military strategy: Physical (i.e. troops and weapons), Intellectual and Moral. It is in effect a war of opposing political systems, and both sides are using propaganda. One difference between this war and the invasion of Crimea is the use of open source intelligence, especially aviation, and the use of autonomous systems like drones and robots.
Thank God that’s over! Never have I complained so much about a book that took me so long to read. So long, in fact, that it is massively overdue and the library has blocked my account. But once I had committed to about 500 pages, I felt that I had to keep going partly out of obtuseness (no big fat 1200 page book was going to beat me!) and because, flicking ahead, I’d find parts that interested me and wanted to reach them. But after probably six weeks of reading, was it worth it? Probably not.
It started well. I was interested in the book after reading an interview with the author, well known as a Russian historian, and the sheer scope of the endeavour impressed me. Starting off with the footsteps found in Happisburgh, England, of a man and four children, dating from between 950,000 and 850,000 years old, Montefiore looks to the family – “the essential unit of human existence”- as a way of linking great events with individual human dramas. By focussing on individuals, families and coteries, he admits that the families and characters that he follows in this book are exceptional, but they also reveal much about their era and place.
It is a way of looking at how kingdoms and states evolved, at how the interconnectivity of peoples developed, and at how different societies absorbed outsiders and merged with others. In this multifaceted drama, I hope that the simultaneous, blended yet single narrative catches something of the messy unpredictability and contingency of real life in real time, the feeling that much is happening in different places and orbits, the mayhem and the confusion of a dizzying, spasmodic, bare-knuckle cavalry charge, often as absurd as it is cruel, always filled with vertiginous surprises, strange incidents and incredible personalities that no one could foresee
xxxv-xxxvi
One of the things that I very admired in this book was his attempt to cover the whole of human endeavour, looking at all the continents across time. Admittedly, Australia gets pretty cursory treatment but both Americas, Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Europe are all dealt with in his chronological swirl throughout human history. The book itself is divided into twenty-two chronological acts, identified not by dates but instead by world population size. Within each ‘act’, there are a number of sections identified by family surname, often conjoining ruling families from very different parts of the globe. Taking Act Eight, for instance, when the world population was 360 million, its four sections set in the 1100 and 1200s are:
Genghis: A Conquering Family
Khmers, Hohenstaufen and Polos
The Keitas of Mali and the Habsburgs of Austria
The Tamerlanians, the Ming and the Obas of Benin.
Its final ‘act’ 22, with a world population of 4.4 billion takes us right up to the present day with:
Yeltsins and Xis, Nehruvians and Assads, Bin Ladens, Kims and Obamas
Trumps and Xis, Sauds, Assads and Kims
I had expected more of an emphasis on dynasties, which certainly do appear in this book, maintaining a presence across several ‘acts’ (e.g. Hapsburgs, Hohenzollerns). Nonetheless, quite a few of his actors are not part of a multi-generational power base (e.g. Yeltsin and Obama in Act 22) but are instead individuals who flame up and then events move beyond them. He does not particularly consider ‘the family’ as a unit of analysis, or identify ways in which it changed in any great depth. However, as he points out in his introduction, by taking ‘the family’ as his frame, it is possible to pay more attention to the lives of women, both as shapers of the men who dominate the main narrative, but who also formed the sinews of dynastic control, stepping in as regents, and as court powers in their own right.
There were some rather surprising omissions. I would have thought that the War of the Roses might have been dealt with, given that family and dynasty were fundamental to it. Perhaps Australia could have got a look in with the Murdoch family that we have inflicted on the late 20th-early21st century Anglo-sphere.
But the book is already overwhelming in many ways. Not only is there the kaleidoscopic effect of shifting from one continent and culture to another, but there is just so much. I gave up trying to keep it all straight, and just let it sweep me along, not even attempting to create my own internal mental narrative while reading.
I was also disconcerted by infelicities that I could detect that undercut my confidence in him as a historian somewhat (and who knows how many went undetected). He starts with Egypt, Africa, Athens, Persia and India, and I must admit that this part read a bit like the ‘begats’ section of the Old Testament. For me, it was only really with the arrival of the more familiar (to me) Romans that the narrative seemed to become more human-based instead of “one damned thing after another”. Now, I am no expert on Rome, beyond listening regularly to two podcast series on Ancient Rome, but one thing that the historians in these podcasts have highlighted is the slanted nature of the remnant narratives available to us today, shaped by the agendas and perspectives of their classical authors. There was no hint here of the cautiousness with which these historians embroider every statement: instead contested events and interpretations were presented as fact. So, likewise, I found myself reading of the truly horrific cruelties imposed by powerful men on the powerless with a similar twinge of skepticism. While not at all doubting man’s ability and perverse imagination in torturing other men, what was the purpose of counting and recounting these chilling punishments?
My wariness was increased further when I learned that:
The first outsiders to reach Australia were not Europeans (the Dutch landed there in 1606), but African sailors from Kilwa [near Tanzania], as evidenced by the discovery of copper Kilwan coins, inscribed in Arabic with the name of an amir of Kilwa, dug up on Marchinbar Island, Northern Territory.
p. 268
What???? Thanks to Google, I found that indeed copper coins, inscribed in Arabic were indeed found in the Northern Territory, but even though their origin remains a mystery, there is little credence given to the idea that they were brought by African sailors in the tenth century CE. Who was he reading? I wondered, to come up with this rather out-there hypothesis, but there was no bibliography. I only found out once I finished the book that there was an online bibliography available so as not to add to this already lengthy book.
Of course, a book focussing on the family is going to deal with sexuality, which was often only tangentially linked to marriage and the passing-on of DNA. But I did find myself wondering what was the point of frequent tales, especially in the footnotes, of perversion and sexual oddity, and the narrative and political purpose such anecdotes served in the histories from which they were drawn. In fact the footnotes, while often interesting and quirky, seem to act as a bit of a catch-all for the facts that he had uncovered that he couldn’t bear to leave out, even if they were only obliquely related to the text.
However, one thing that came through clearly was the distorting effect of slavery – probably the most anti-family activity man ever invented. Not just Atlantic slavery, but across all societies and often as a by-product of warfare, slavery enriched some families and dynasties, and the consequences of that wealth stretched across centuries, furthering further empire-development and discovery.
This book was published in 2022, and particularly the last chapters are narrowing in on Ukraine and Russia, the author’s specialty. I suspect that events yet to come will render these chapters out-of-date and possibly downright wrong. In a book which has travelled so far, across so much time and geography, I am surprised that he is risking rendering his scholarship obsolete by such presentism. His frequent coy references to “this author” in referring to his own interviews with influential political actors remind us that his work has not just been desk research, but that he has been a player in present-day politics as well. That said, I was interested that in a footnote in the closing pages, he rebutted Putin’s argument about Ukraine’s Muscovite and Russian origins by pointing out that Ukraine has, over time, been ruled by Ottomans, Habsburgs, Polish kings and Lithuanian dukes, and peopled by Cossacks, Tatars, Poles, Jews, Italians and Greeks, as well as Russians and Ukrainians (fn. p.1231)
This book was written “during the menacing times of Covid” (p. xxviii) and perhaps that accounts for its length. I was drawn to keep reading but I found myself resenting the sheer weight and length of the book, and the relentless piling on of actors and actions. I found myself wishing that he would take a break from the narrative, to take stock and analyze for commonalities and change, before continuing on.
Am I glad that I read it? Probably, in that I will probably take away flickers of recognition of names and cultures, and from the effect of seeing events that occurred contemporaneously that I had only seen in isolation previously. But it was damned hard work and I just don’t know -yet- whether it was worth it.
My rating: My God, how does someone rate a book about the whole of human written history? 7/10?
Sourced from: Yarra Plenty Regional Library. Please, YPRL and the borrowers waiting for me to return it, forgive me for holding on to it for so long. But I bet that few future borrowers will be able read it in four weeks either.
New Books Network This came up on my New Books related to Latin America, but it’s a pretty tenuous connection. Instead, in Beyond Belief: How Pentecostalism is Taking Over the World, Australian journalist talks about her recent book of the same name, aimed at a general rather than academic readership. She defines ‘pentecostalism’ in terms of the influence of the Holy Spirit, going back to William J. Seymour in 1905, who instituted the Azusa Street Revival in about 1905. She then moves to the 1950s and Norman Vincent Peale, and then to the Jesus People of the 1960s New Age movement. A fourth wave, possibly, is now with the spread of Pentecostalism into Latin America, Korea, Brazil and Nigeria. There is no central authority, and the pentecostal churches tend to reflect the society in which they are embedded e.g. the Catholic influence in Latin America, Shamaanism in Korea. There is still an element of the prosperity gospel at play, but it’s more an emphasis on health and wealth, both of which tend to improve when people get their lives together. Pentecostals have always been good at leveraging the media. After radio in the 1950s, in the 1960s and 1970s it was cassette tapes that people could listen to in their cars. Hillsong has always used music as part of its business model. She explores the link between right-wing populism and Pentecostalism, and notes that both use entertainment and stagecraft and draw on the feeling of being ‘besieged by wokeness’.
Rough Translation This is a two-part program about smuggling pills for a medical abortion into Ukraine. Part I Under the Counter, a young German doctor, Vicki, reads of the shortage of abortion pills (mifepristone followed by misoprostol) in Ukraine. She and her boyfriend Ari find a supplier based in Africa who can source the pills from India, and then he offers a huge quantity- far more than ever anticipated. The only problem is that they have to travel through Poland, where abortion is illegal. Part II The Handoff follows this unlikely group of smugglers into Ukraine, where they learn that there are complications in both pregnancy and abortion during war time. I really enjoyed these two podcasts.
Emperor Trajan: Wikimedia
Emperors of RomeInterlude: Valerius Flaccus. I’d never heard of this Roman poet, from the Flavian period, who wrote an 8-book epic The Argonautica that retold the well known (at that time) story of Jason and the Golden Fleece. He drew fairly heavily on Apollonius of Rhodes ‘ more famous epic, but he was also strongly influenced by Virgil as well. The episode features Dr. Peter Davis. And now, back to the Emperors with Episode XLV In Trajan We Trust . Trajan was born in 53 CE in Italica in Spain. His father had been Consul, had fought in the Jewish Wars and had been governor of Syria. We don’t really know much about him before he became Emperor, because there’s a Big Black Hole of Biography. He started his military career in Syria with his father, then moved to the Rhine. He became guardian of his cousin’s children, one of whom was Hadrian- spoiler alert! He was a good choice for Emperor, because he was a successful military leader. Pliny is almost nauseating in his praise of Trajan, but he was generally regarded as virile and active. His accession to become Emperor was largely violence free (except for the murder of some potential enemies), and he promised to work well with the Senate. Episode XLVI Trajan vs Dacia sees Trajan heading off to Dacia (present day Romania), at a time when the Roman Empire was at its largest extent. Dacia was a client kingdom, headed by the Dacian king Decebalus. Trajan had a victory in the First Dacian War 101-102 CE, then headed back in 105CE when Decabalus started sabre-rattling again. Trajan built a huge bridge across the Danube as a statement of strength, and leveled the capital. The defeat of Dacia brought huge wealth into Rome, and Trajan partied with a 120-day triumph.
File on 4.(BBC)Three Friends Emily, Nadia and Christie met each other when they were admitted as 18 year olds to the Tees Esk and Wear Valley Mental Health Trust with severe mental problems. They all died within 8 months of each other, in a medical environment that did not keep them safe. Their families are left blaming themselves, and the hospital.
Lectures in History (C-Span)Gays and Lesbians in Colonial America. This lecture in a university seminar class is given by Santa Clara University professor Nancy Unger. She starts off by challenging the denial of homosexuality by many African-Americans (particularly religious African-American groups) and Africans who claim that homosexuality was “un-African”. Instead, she argues, there was an African tradition of boy-wives. She argues that in early 17th century American colonies, there was a recognition of same-sex relationships among slaves. At this early stage, there was no emphasis on reproduction as there was later, and so same-sex relationships were tolerated. As time went on, the official view was that homosexuality was unacceptable, and amongst colonists it was a capital offence. But there were only two men executed, partially because the law required two witnesses and also because there was a labour shortage at the time. She then goes on to look at case studies of gay and trans-sexual court cases. One was of Nicholas Sension in 1677, who despite his high status and marriage, had a 30 year history of homosexuality. The court case was reluctantly brought because the community was concerned that he was bringing them into disrepute. Steven Broughton was a church leader, who was voted back into his leadership position by 2/3 of the congregation when he was reported. Thomas/Thomasina Hall was declared to be both a man and a woman because of their ambiguous genitalia.
Take Me To Your Leader (ABC)Vladimir Putin I’ve heard few podcasts and seen a few documentaries since the Ukraine invasion about Vladimir Putin, but this one was particularly interesting because Hamish Macdonald talks with former (?) ABC journalist Monica Attard, who has a rather different perspective on Ukraine than we usually get. All of the guests agreed that Putin was likely to continue as President up to his death.
The Resident Judge of Port Phillip 